This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

ESDC pushes for eviction order by April 21; lawyer for some condemnees says timeline is unlikely, given judge's desire to avoid role of sheriff

After yesterday's hearing on the case challenging the Empire State Development Corporation's (ESDC) 2006 Determination & Findings to pursue eminent domain, I also inquired about a hearing April 9 before Kings County Supreme Court Justice Abraham Gerges regarding the condemnation process.

Bottom line: the ESDC wants to get an eviction order after an oral argument in court on Wednesday, April 21; attorney Matthew Brinckerhoff thinks it's unlikely.

Brinckerhoff is one of several lawyers involved in this case, which includes a broad number of condemnees, including several property owners who have otherwise not formally challenged the project. (Video shot by Jonathan Barkey.)

What happened April 9

Brinckheroff said that the lawyers discussed "very specific details of the valuation process," including the provision of advance payments, which are necessary in order for people to seek new premises even though they may no longer have title to their property.

ESDC lawyer Charles Webb, according to Brinckerhoff, said such payments would be available within two weeks of fulfilling certain conditions.

"They also presented an order to show cause," said Brinckerhoff. "They want to make a motion requesting an order allowing them to get the sheriff to evict everybody. That was made returnable for argument on April 21."

Soon or later?

That could lead to a writ of assistance, essentially an order of eviction issued by the court. "There's a very strong argument that it's incredibly premature," Brinckerhoff said. "Normally that's a process that takes many, many months."

The ESDC's justification, he said, is that "the developer is losing something like $7 million a month" on carrying the property. (He later said he wasn't certain of the figure; I haven't seen the document yet.)

The gist of the ESDC argument, he said, is that "this project is so important that it really doesn't matter whether people's lives are going to be disrupted. We really have to keep our eye on the ball, which is the financial injury to Forest City Ratner."

"I guess that could happen," Brinckerhoff said of an April 21 eviction order. "I think that is manifestly unlikely, and borderline impossible, if nothing else because it's clear that Justice Gerges--he wants everybody to try to work this out somehow. He said this much in court."

Compromise or stand-off?

"I think he's going to want to exhaust, as any judge should, frankly, all possible options before he orders the sheriff to come and remove people from their homes," he said.

Why? "It looks bad and presumably, he as a judge is going to be interested in the rights and lives of all people involved in this, not just Forest City Ratner and its pocketbook." That would mean "a way that causes as little disruption as possible. Issuing an immediate order... doesn't seem consistent with that."

Aren't some people not willing to work it out? "I know that Freddy's Bar has made it clear that they want to be there when the bulldozers come, with their handcuffs to the bar," he said. "I don't really know anything more than that."

An eviction order also would complicate the pending case discussed in court yesterday; the next hearing will be May 12. Presumably representatives of the plaintiffs would want to stay such an order forcing their departure, since victory in their case could completely unscramble the egg.

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Pacific Park Brooklyn is seriously delayed, Forest City Realty Trust said yesterday in a news release, which further acknowledged that the project has caused a $300 million impairment, or write-down of the asset, as the expected revenues no longer exceed the carrying cost.

The Cleveland-based developer, parent of Brooklyn-based Forest City Ratner, which is a 30% investor in Pacific Park along with 70% partner/overseer Greenland USA, blamed the "significant impairment" on an oversupply of market-rate apartments, the uncertain fate of the 421-a tax break, and a continued increase in construction costs.

While the delay essentially confirms the obvious, given that two major buildings have not launched despite plans to do so, it raises significant questions about the future of the project, including:if market-rate construction is delayed, will the affordable h…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …

As I've written, Mayor Bill de Blasio sure knows how to steer and spin coverage of his affordable housing initiatives.

Indeed, his latest announcement, claiming significant progress, came with a pre-press release op-ed in the New York Daily News and then a friendly photo-op press conference with an understandably grateful--and very lucky--winner of an affordable housing lottery.

To me, though, the most significant quote came from Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, who, as the Wall Street Journal reported:
said public housing had been “starved” of federal support for years now, leaving the city with fewer ways of creating affordable housing. “Are we relying too heavily on the private sector?” she said. “There is no alternative.”
Though Glen was using what she surely sees as a common-sense phrase, it recalls the slogan of a politician with whom I doubt de Blasio identifies: former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative who believed in free markets.